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“Go on, Sam! Ask Rosie for a dance!”
The drums thumped and the pipes ululated, and Sam was three ales deep and walking in curves when Frodo pushed him onto the dance floor.
“No, I think I’ll have another ale…”
Frodo pushed him still, however, and the next thing he knew she was laughing, her thick brown curls cast in golden glow by the torches.
The sides of Frodo’s mouth went up, up, up as she laughed, and it was hard to look away. But then Rosie caught him by the arms, and they spun around, their mutual pull propelling them into the crowd of dancers – some spinning about, others braiding themselves past one another, others swaying like flowers in a field.
After a while, the undulating, percussive sound herded the dancers in a circle. Round and round they went, though Sam's limbs were sluggish, and he skipped and leaped, gasped and heaved, following the couple before them.
His heart throbbed thickly in his throat, and soon his hair was slick against the back of his neck. Rosie’s grip was firm, and she smiled at him with high, turgid cheeks. But he did not really see her – which was, perhaps, good. Drunkenness was good, and topsy-turvy dancing was good. If he scrambled his head hard enough, he might come out a different hobbit. Then perhaps he would be content, instead of longing for things he could not have.
The music trilled to a peak and then dropped off, the dancers erupting into cheers. With the remnants of their momentum, Sam and Rosie spun into the side of a tent, stopping when his back hit the canvas.
Still holding hands, they were very near – closer than when they had danced.
The air was heavy-hot, though it was late September. The night was thick with splotches of light, and a sober Sam would not have done this, but drunken Sam pulled Rosie closer by the arm, inhaling her salty sweetness and the flower-water used for hair…
Maybe if something happened with someone else, he might be free… His lips relaxed into an “o,” his chest giving a twinge like an inch-worm was nipping away inside.
But then –
“What are you doin’?”
Rosie put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him ever so slightly. Sam shrank away, folding himself like a bug caught eating a seedling.
“What – what do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. What business do you have tryin’ to kiss me, when it isn’t me you want, and you know it?”
A lightning bolt ran between his shoulders. Every torch and lamp was suddenly too bright, and Rosie bored into him with her eyes – at least as far as he could sense, for he could not look directly at her.
“I – uh – well – you…”
The band stirred into another song, the cheers and claps prodding it along.
Rosie straightened up and raised her head.
“It’s high time you stopped lyin’ to yourself, Samwise Gamgee. And as for me, I’m not used to bein’ second-best. You know that too.”
A silence settled between them. The music rippled, pitched and danced, and if someone told him that it came from the opposite side of the river, he would not have been shocked.
“So, who do you think I want, then?”
Slowly, the drink cocooned him again. Sober Sam would not have said this, but three ales deep Sam did things that sober Sam could never dream.
Rosie tapped her foot, and then she stepped toward him.
She put a finger under his chin, turning his head until his line of sight ran past the tent, along the side of the dance floor, and all the way to a table laden with pies.
Before the table stood a tall, slender lass, bullied that morning into wearing a ruffled dress the color of her eyes – a robin’s egg blue that an aunt had picked out for her.
She angled her petal-face upward, her shoulders drooping. It was posture uniquely hers and uniquely lovely, though it made her smallish chest look even smaller. Beside her stood Mr. Merry, and they talked and laughed as he ate a piece of pie out of his hand. She pushed him in the shoulder, just like Rosie had pushed him a moment ago.
“For-sy-thi-a Bag-gins,” Rosie intoned. “Fro-do. Do you think I’m blind? Do you think everyone is blind, Samwise Gamgee?”
Rosie’s cheeks were turgid with laughter, and Sam felt his soul leaking out from between his toes.
“See, even now your eyes betray you. Can’t look away, can you?”
And it was true.
Frodo was like that: she had a way of making everything else seem unimportant.
The dance fell away, along with the fairy-strings of lights, the pyramids of food, and the jostling people. A broad, clear path lay from the tent to the other side of the dance floor, and even Merry had disappeared.
“So go on,” Rosie’s voice floated by his side. “Don’t insult me by trying’ to be with me just to be with me – I’m not that sort of girl. Go on and tell her that you wish to wed her and bed her and have thirteen children, a’right?”
Another lightning-bolt passed between Sam’s shoulders.
“You – know that?”
Rosie blew a raspberry.
“Everyone knows that. Now go.”
She nudged him in the direction of the floor, and he locked his knees just in time to keep from falling.
“No… no…” he rasped.
Recovering his bearings, he turned and strode away down the grassy knoll: away from the party, his senses battling the numbness.
The party noise came quiet and harsh by turns, and his skin was hot and thick against the moving air.
Rosie soon caught up with him, her voice indignant.
“Samwise Gamgee!” she exclaimed. “Now, you listen to me! Those doe-eyes of hers have not stopped on a single suitor since the beginning, and how many are there left, besides you? But what do you do? You close your eyes and pretend it’s all a coincidence? Slow your toes and listen to me! You cannot evade me, no more’n you can evade the truth! Consider – what if Mr. Bilbo decides that his pretty niece has tarried for far too long, and the next hobbit to rap on the door is Lotho-pimple with his weekly proposal!”
Sam ignored her, and they strode on in silence – his tread heavy, hers relentless. He only stopped when they reached the edge of the field, and far behind them, the party glowed warm and orblike.
“No… no,” he said. “She is a Baggins.”
He did not look at Rosie, who seemed to breathe through pursed lips.
“A Baggins? What does that mean? If you mean what I think you mean, a Took married a Smallburrow once, so it ain’t like it doesn’t happen. And Mr. Bilbo and Miss Frodo – when did they last care what people think?”
Again, she dug her fists into her sides, her skirt belling out matter-of-factly.
The smell of the Water rose coolly up the path, and Sam sat down – or rather slipped down onto his bottom.
“Well, then she is Miss Frodo,” he said.
He pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his chin in his hands.
Some distance beyond, the rolling hills lay broken up by hedges and chimney pots. Farther away from the glow, it was easier to see.
Rosie sat beside him and nudged him with her shoulder.
“Well, she may be Miss Frodo,” she said, “but the way she grows interested in seeds, and annuals and perennials, and different types of mulch when she’s around you is uncanny. I don’t think she ever speaks of it otherwise. She loves things that grow, but she’s not the type to make ‘em grow herself, if you get my meanin’. And the way she’ll never admit that your poems’re overwrought…”
She giggled, and Sam ran his hands over his face.
“So why did she push me into your arms, then? Tell me that.”
He felt entirely too awake now, but wished he could be dead-asleep.
Rosie shrugged.
“I dunno. Maybe she got tired of waitin’, or maybe she got tired of you pinin’. But both can be remedied, I’m sure.”
A cheer went up from the field, and Sam trained his ears, but there was nothing more to hear. He stood up, his limbs complaining at the effort.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
On shaky legs, he turned and strode over the tufted grass. His mind was plenty scrambled and his senses dragged, but no longer from the ale.
The wind whistled and howled in the crags as they hid under a rocky overhang. Frodo was asleep with her head resting in Sam’s lap.
It was the first time in many days that she properly slept. Sam tried to give her every chance, but she preferred to sit and watch, though Sam did not trust her to watch for danger. Beneath her cloak, she always moved her fingers over the Ring – another echo of her burden.
Sam knew much more about his Frodo by now, for the journey had tied them together in ways he could never dream. He respected her even more now, and he tended her in illness and in health, while she leaned on him when she needed a joke, a forgotten item or simply a silence.
He did not wish to insult her – even in his own mind – with his romantic imaginings, but he simply could not help it. He had asked her to lay her head in his lap, and at the time he had meant nothing by it. But now, the weight of her head pacified the howling wind, and it turned the craggy rock into the homiest inn. Frodo lay in his lap, softly breathing, and her short-cropped hair flowed wispy-smooth over her brow.
He longed to run his fingers through that hair, and over the powder-soft, milky skin – the skin he had touched so briefly in Rivendell, when he tended her in her illness.
Their touch had never meant anything – except when it did. Like the time he grabbed her hand, seeing that she was awake after her battle with the Morgul wound. He hardly knew what he did, and he might have burned to a crisp when he realized. But her eyes were alive and giving as the great summer sky, and he forgave himself very quickly.
When they left the Shire, she had donned a disguise, wearing a lad’s clothing, lowering her voice, and going by “he,” “Mr.,” and “Master.”
The night before they fled, she had spun around, bowing in her trousers, and exclaimed: “The wizard has given his orders! You shall call me… Mister Frodo!” Her friends had laughed at the farce, and she looked sheepish immediately after. But the following morning she walked with her shoulders unfurled, and gone was the wonted stoop that diminished her breasts. Chatting and joking with them all, her stride was light, and her eyes forever facing forward.
Now she lay on his lap and it was difficult to tell who she was – Mr. Frodo or Miss – and he doubted even she knew.
But perhaps he needed no answer. Her face lay untroubled, skin translucent, veins of blue running river-like underneath. New wrinkles had formed at the sides of her lips, but she looked neither young nor old, and like neither lad nor lass, but beautiful in a way that defied such divisions.
She was less light of foot now – certainly nothing like in the beginning – and again she stooped as she walked. But there was now a certain light about her – a deeper, older sort of light that reminded him of Lothlórien. Her face glowed misty-gold as she lay on his knee, and with it there, he did not miss a candle.
“I love her, whether or no,” Sam whispered at last. “I love her, whoever she may be, and wherever she may go.”
Again and again, he whispered the words.
The wind whistled plangently in the crags, drowning out his voice, and the outlines of the rock grew dim.
Soon, the meager light would leave, and Gollum would return, and it would be time to get a move on.
How much time did they have? An hour, perhaps?
Let it be an hour. An hour with his Mr. Frodo, or Miss Frodo, it mattered not. Wherever she was, there he would be. But if she woke, the words would be gone.
It would be some time before he said them again, even to himself.